Project description
Tuberculosis: a persistent menace
Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is the leading single infectious cause of death worldwide, claiming more than one million lives per year. Treatment is complicated by long duration, primary treatment failure, disease recurrence, and increasingly-prevalent drug resistance. All of these complications are linked to a phenomenon known as phenotypic tolerance, by which some bacteria within a drug-susceptible population transiently survive exposure to a drug without acquiring heritable resistance mutations. Tolerant cells—called persisters—are thus prime targets for new therapeutics that could improve outcomes in TB, but the mechanisms by which they survive would-be lethal antibiotic exposure remain a mystery. To understand this phenomenon, COMBATTB is uncovering the genetic factors and metabolic pathways that lead to phenotypic tolerance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The thorough understanding of these pathways will establish an essential foundation for building better, faster TB drug regimens that could help save countless lives.
Objective
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is one of about a dozen bacterial species for which some clinical isolates are now resistant to most or all antibiotics (abx) approved for treatment of the infections they cause. Mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Mtb deserve study for their potential relevance to AMR in other pathogens; because tuberculosis (TB) is now the leading cause of death from infectious disease; and because drug-resistant TB may be the most prevalent of all drug-resistant bacterial infections. Heritable AMR in Mtb emerges with interruption of treatment, and the long duration of TB treatment provides many opportunities for interruption. Prolonged treatment is necessary because of nonheritable resistance, also called phenotypic tolerance or persistence, defined as the transient tolerance of bacteria in an antibiotic-sensitive population to an antibiotic during exposure to an otherwise lethal concentration of that antibiotic. In contrast to “resisters”, whose AMR is genetically encoded, “persisters” are genetically sensitive bacteria whose phenotypic tolerance allows them to survive for prolonged periods during what would otherwise be rapidly curative treatment. In addition, phenotypic tolerance is likely a source of treatment failure and a major contributor to TB reactivation after apparently effective treatment. The specific aims of this application are to identify genetic determinants that foster phenotypic tolerance in Mtb and decipher at a molecular level the mechanisms by which Mtb enters and maintains a persistent state.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology bacteriology
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine pneumology tuberculosis
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs antibiotics
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy drug resistance antibiotic resistance
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
MSCA-IF-EF-RI - RI – Reintegration panel
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2018
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
SW7 2AZ LONDON
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.